Page 5 of Conrad

I felt suddenly bashful as I looked up at Dushka though my lashes. “Yes, sir.” I hadn’t used the submissive term with him in ages, and it had an immediate effect. “I’ll have fun, fuck around, and come back with new stories and new ideas.”

“That’s my boy,” Dushka said in a rough voice, then leaned in to kiss me.

It was a fierce, possessive kiss. He smashed his mouth into mine so hard that it cut the inside of my lip against my teeth. But I figured that was the point, just like the mark on my inner thigh, the one on my ass, and the one on my neck. Dushka was trying to leave reminders of himself all over me.

Those marks would fade in time, but my love for the man who had made a man out of the boy I’d once been would never go away. I belonged to Dushka, whether I was his pup or not, and I always would.

“Go now,” he said, so close to tears it was endearing, when he ended our kiss and pushed me away. “Go have your adventure.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and barely managed to croak out, “I’ll write.”

Dushka grunted and nodded, then jerked his chin up to tell me to get on the boat.

I felt like I was picking up everything I was and could be and taking it away with me. I knew I would be back, knew it in every fiber of my being, but that didn’t make leaving easy.

I busied myself helping Uriah load the last of our supplies on the boat and finding a place at the bow as the boatmen untied us from the dock and pushed out into the river. We would be traveling upstream, which meant every spare man would be needed to row, so I found a seat, prepared to do my part.

“Ready, men?” Uriah called from the front of the boat.

We called back to him, I raised a hand to wave to Dushka one last time, and we dropped our oars into the water.

My journey of a lifetime into the heart of the Old Realm had finally begun.

ChapterTwo

The journey upriver was uneventful. There wasn’t much in that part of the forest anyhow. Kettering was the last outpost of what passed for civilization along the Wolf River. Beyond that, there were only wild wolves living in the forest. One or two small packs had set up camps near the river’s edge, but as we rowed past them, I wasn’t impressed. They looked like the sort of thing that could be picked up or abandoned at a moment’s notice.

Other than that, there was nothing to see, which made the journey dull.

Of course, a dull journey meant I had plenty of time to think.

I thought about Anton and how sad he’d looked when we’d parted that morning. Of all my friends, Anton was the biggest enigma to me. He kept himself so closed off when I felt like all he wanted was to be loved. From what I knew of his past and his family, that made sense. His father especially had been a fucking bastard. Literally. The idea of a man who fucked his own son made me shiver.

I distracted myself away from those thoughts by wondering about my friends. I wondered how Sebald was doing since setting out with the soldiers to escape being claimed as a pup by Maldurik’s successor. I wondered if he’d made it to Hedeon, and if he’d found his old lover, Barthold.

I wondered how Orel was doing with his stoic quest to be taken seriously and treated like a man. I liked Orel, but he had such a chip on his shoulder, since he was the only one of the Sons of the Cities who hadn’t been born a noble. He would have denied it if anyone pressed the issue, but, as a farmer’s son, he felt like he had to work three times as hard to be taken half as seriously as the rest of us. I hoped he found someone to love him just as he was.

I thought about Lefric and the way I knew Radulph was ignoring him. Maybe Anton wouldn’t be the only one to break with his man.

I thought about Jace and Gennadi and all they’d been through to be together. Thoughts of them made me smile, though Jace probably would have taken issue with me thinking he was adorable.

I thought about Neil and Peter and how happy they were with each other and Magnus. Peter was so jealous of my friendship with Neil, which never failed to make me smile. I absolutely would have considered pursuing something with Neil, if Neil had eyes for anyone other than Peter and Magnus. Well, and Jakob and Mikal, although that was more for fun than anything serious. I could have fun with Neil too, if Peter would let me.

Dushka would definitely have let me.

Thinking of Dushka left me sighing and my heart trembling with trepidation. A whole year without him. I didn’t know what it would look like. Dushka was more than just my lover. He was my mentor and my guide. He was the sort of man I aspired to be, and he was my complete opposite in so many ways—rough and aggressive where I was thoughtful and passive. Our differences were what made us fit with each other, though, and I already felt like part of me was missing.

By the time we dropped anchor for the night many dozens of miles north of Kettering, I was starting to question whether leaving for an entire year was really a good idea. I was relatively quiet as the boat’s crew gathered around a fire that had been made in a brazier to cook supper. The boat was large, as far as boats went, though not as large as the one I’d seen in Gravlock that was for Magnus’s use as king. But it was big enough that we didn’t have to get off the boat to cook meals or to bed down for the night.

As I snuggled into my bedroll on deck under the open sky, I contemplated whether I should follow through with Dushka’s orders to enjoy myself as much as possible with one of the other rowers. I didn’t really have the heart to start fucking around that night, when all was said and done. There would be time for that later.

The next day passed much like the first. The section of the Wolf River that we traveled up wasn’t marked on maps. None of the river was, but the particular part we navigated, the part that diverged from the Kostya River near its source in the mountains, was perhaps the most hidden and secretive part of the entire frontier. By afternoon of that second day, we didn’t even see wild wolves along the riverbank.

We dropped anchor to spend another night on the boat as the sun started to set over the trees. It was then that I noticed a faint glow on the horizon in front of us.

“That’ll be Tesladom,” Uriah explained when he saw my confusion.

“We’re that close?” I asked, blinking in surprise.

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